The Arachne System (SPIDERLIV 3)

"I have confidence you can make one unsettlingly fast. It doesn't have to be big," Athena replied smoothly. "... oh, you want me to guess so you can beat my estimation as an ego boost."

"Am I that transparent?" you asked, then you paused. "Actually, something that small might be kind of pain. I wish I had one of those wallets with the faraday shields in them, provided it actually worked and didn't just slap 'RFID Secure!' on some cheap Amazon knock-off."

"Why would somebody do that?" the symbiote asked. "Just go on the internet and tell lies?"

"Liv, we're in Manhattan, there's tech workers with thousand-dollar wallets everywhere. Find somebody wearing smart glasses and ask," Athena suggested. Oh yeah, right.

You slid off the balcony and descended to street level, scanning the crowd. Took you about thirty seconds to find your mark; guy in his mid-thirties at a stop on his e-bike, talking on a headset, looking at his smart watch, ponytail, beard, messenger bag. The automatic searches confirmed he was definitely your guy; Associated Director of Technology at Raymond James Financial Services, online orders in excess of most people's yearly salary, interesting open-source Github projects, host of two podcasts.

Target spotted.

You landed neatly beside him, the robotic arms folding away, and leaned against the lightpost. Instantly a crowd's worth of smartphones pointed your way, the clicks and clacks of fake shutter sounds audible even over the midday traffic.

"Sup man," you said casually. "Nice bike."

"... thanks? Uh, big fan," he replied. "How do your, uh… legs work?"

"Really well, thanks! Weird question; can I borrow your wallet? Uuh, not for the cards, take everything out, I need the faraday shielding for a few hours. It is, and this is not a joke, a matter of national security."

"... Uuuh… sure?" he asked. There were advantages to being a beloved superhero. "How did you know I had a shielded wallet?"

"Lucky guess," you replied. His podcast had three episodes about them, apparently. He retrieved the beautiful black wallet from his pocket (it unfolded like elegant origami), retrieved his cards, and handed it over.

"Hey, do you wanna be a guest on-"

"Maybe! Send me an email so I'll can get this back to you!" you replied, already flying across the road and heading for the parking garage. "That went well. Now how do we find the car?"

It did not take you long; it was the one with the California plates. You popped the door open, and there, sitting in the cupholder, was the ring. It was a thick silver band with a simple pattern across it, no gems or anything fancy, but it hummed to your tech-sense in a familiar way. Vibranium, but with something else. Something bigger.

"This feels like actual robbery," you muttered, snatching the ring with a robotic arm. "I don't feel good about this."

"Nope, this is fucked up," Athena agreed. "I've texted Justine. What do we do with it now?"

"I want to talk it back home and take a closer look, work out what it is and what it does, and then we'll go from there," you explained, lining the arm up to drop the ring into your hand. "We'll figure out-"

The moment the silver touched your hand, you understood. The knowledge came to you full-force, unbidden, there like you always knew it.

"This is a connection to the tech-sense," you said instantly. "This is how Wakanda built all that supertech. My brain is one of these. Fuck, fuck."

"... Liv?" Athena asked.

"I'm not the only one, of course I'm not the only one," you muttered, holding the ring above the wallet, your mind racing a mile a minute. "Do you think Wakanda has another one of these? Has their tech been getting better since it went missing? If somebody stole this that would mean they'd be limited to building and researching things the old fashioned way, oh God, maybe their tech works with tech-sense connectors like this and… no, they'd be lesser, everything it builds is lesser than it is, so obviously they want it back… the Pretender, it's… shit, of course whoever held this would be royalty, their entire technological society would be completely reliant on it, so presumably somebody either stole it or they didn't like who inherited it… presumably whoever that was was connected to Eric somehow, and they went into exile with the most powerful artefact in the world in his pocket, probably not knowing how to use it because I bet they have manuals they've built up, but it's powerful enough that Eric can change traffic lights-"

"Liv…"

"- without even thinking about it, took me a long while to adjust to the tech-sense and it's been getting better over time, I wonder if it does the lie detection thing… you probably need to attune to it. Maybe the other powers also I have are connected to it as well, wear this long enough you get those too-"

"Liv!"

"- but then again I think there's something more going on. Is there vibranium in my bloodstream, or in my brain? Can I build a detector for that? Probably not, because they can't build a detector for this either, of course they can't see it clearly, their tech is effectively subordinated to it and unlike what I work with was presumably developed without an existing base of quote unquote real technology developed through the scientific method so I bet a lot of it is indistinguishable from magic for anyone not using the ring-"

"-OLIVIA OCTAVIUS ATHENA WANTS TO TALK TO YOU!"

"- huh?"

"RING. WALLET. NOW."

With a bit of effort, you dropped the ring into the wallet, and it felt a little like somebody just slammed the brakes on your brain.

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